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Blog Posts for February 2013
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From Seeing: Dating is how you sample the Us before making that big commitment to move forward together. It's the trial run. You test the relationship. You try it out with your family and friends - and your children, if you already have some. Dating is not about showing the world that you found someone who actually hangs out with you. Dating is about learning whether you should continue to hang around that person. It's about learning the fit between the two of you.For that reason, you have an obligation to be your most natural self. The other person needs to see you exactly as you are. But what if they run away? Then it's not a fit, oh heart. But then I will be alone! Until you find a fit, yes. Some people change their behavior and expectations after commitment. You might wake up to a person and a relationship you've never encountered if this happens. It is a Bait and Switch. You thought you found a fit while dating and discovered something completely unknown and unexpected when committed. Something so deeply unfair and deceptive cannot last. So it's best to simply be your most natural self. Expose it all. Let the other person see you fully. Because eventually they will anyway. No matter how much it sucks, you can never compromise your vision for a relationship.Sight is everything. Without clarity, you don't have anything. ETC: A friend of mine who will likely jump back into the dating pool in a few months urged me to amend this - it's not that you want to reveal everything. She's right. I don't mean to "Expose it all," though that is what I wrote. Poor wording on my part. You don't have to reveal everything about you all at once. That would be overwhelming and inappropriate. But if some aspect of your life were revealed, there wouldn't be a jarring shock at what your suitor would find. What s/he would find would be consistent with what's already known about you. You reveal enough to convey a sense of you that the possibility of shock at other revelations wouldn't be relationship-threatening. |
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The "Us" is a fragile, precious, and rare thing. It's no different than a baby, born into the world, with two people to love and care for it. We make the assumption that because it doesn't really exist - it's not a corporeal being - and because it's really the blend of two adults, that somehow it will fend for itself. But the truth is that the world seeks to tear it to shreds from the moment it's spawned. The desires and jealousies of others, rumor, finances and stresses of various kinds, time robbed of it by concerns that seem more pressing... "Us" spends its usually short life in soft and hard assaults, and frequently unattended. A mother famously sports her mama bear claws for her cub when danger arises. She rises on her hind legs and brandishes every vicious promise she can muster to the threat she perceives. Nobody fucks with her family. Isn't "Us" family? I mean, to be sure, isn't it the very nucleus of the family? Doesn't it deserve protection as much as a newborn or any other member of the family? Relationships are not about finding someone with whom you can hang out and get along. That carelessness will end in tragedy. Breakups and divorces happen all of the time. 75th anniversaries occur with such rarity that they're almost unheard of. Nobody gets into a relationship with the goal of briefly riding it to a bitter end but rather in hope of loving persistence. "Us" isn't capable of feeding itself or caring for itself - and regrettably "Us" often doesn't receive the passionate attention and care and protection it needs to grow strong and healthy. We watch our children with a third eye. We're wary of strangers. Overprotective isn't always a bad thing. We admire people who have a superb sense of parental strength and guidance. We also celebrate those who surpass decades in marital unity. You don't get to those years without a third eye and being wary of the dangers that can threaten "Us."
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As sales of 247Toolset continue, we recently sold a cell phone distributor. We imported their 50,000 customers into their portal, which gives them the ability to search by eligibility date and device so that they can text message them a coupon.  Which leads to these results...  Which then allows them to text message the list.  Targeting your customers like that isn't something you can easily do in the industry today. We'll be going after this vertical very aggressively. And in other industries too. |
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I recently had an encounter with someone who plays the victim. I've met a lot of those in life. It occurred to me that people do this because no one expects anything of a victim. "You poor dear - lie down and rest." Initially after a traumatic event, being numb and working to recover from the event robs us of our normal productivity. That's normal. Carrying it beyond that point and refusing to get back into the swing of life is incomprehensible to me. Think about a person you know who, when you see him, immediately utters how life burdens him. Down in the mouth about people and life and circumstances... we drop our expectations of that person right away. Don't want to burden them further. It's laziness, and I call bullshit on it. It used to be that we looked down on the person who required welfare from others because they couldn't hold themselves up. Self-sustaining was a requirement. "Productive member of society" - a phrase you seldom hear any more. Playing the victim is a form of social welfare. If there is an unsigned "social contract," it's not to give what we have away to others who are less fortunate. Everyone in life, at some point, suffers poor fortune. Life has twists and turns. Lord, I've had my share. But no matter how often you wind up in the dirt, you get back up, dust off, and smile forward. The unspoken social contract, if it exists, is to hold ourselves up to the best of our ability. It's not the job of others to hold me up, or for me to hold up others. We owe it to others to be our best. We owe it to ourselves. The more we operate that way, the less likely we are to ever be a victim, or give ourselves the opportunity to play one. |
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I like to play a few games on my phone, as everyone does. I gravitate toward word games. So it occurs to me: 247Toolset allows our clients to have text message interaction with their web site. What if each client could have their own word game via text message? After working through the day on a different project, I spent a few hours tweaking the framework so that our clients can create their own Hangman phrases. If their customers/members text GAME to the appropriate place, it will crank up a game of Hangman where you guess one letter at a time until you know the word.  Here's the thing: I have no idea if the market will respond to this or not, but I think this has a few advantages. 1) It allows for a small/mid-sized company to have a little fun with their customers. Not everyone can afford their own app, after all. This is a simple and inexpensive way to get that. 2) Don't have a smart phone? We got you covered. 3) A client can create their own marketing messages via the Hangman phrases. They could even have a phrase a day and people could bring in the solved puzzle as a coupon of sorts. 4) This is kind of ideal for places where you have to wait: doctor's offices, hair salons... the client can use it to inform their audience. 247Toolset sells for $1,200 a year. We just picked up our first cell phone outlet - this might really work for them. I talk to them tomorrow, so I'll show it to them then and see what they think. ETC: The cell phone store owners love it. They're running with the concept. What if banks did this? Checkout lines in grocery stores? Lots of places for this kind of thing. |
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